Audiobook: Shahnameh, The Persian Book of Kings

The definitive translation by Dick Davis of the great national epic of Iran—now newly revised and expanded to be the most complete English-language edition

Dick Davis—“our pre-eminent translator from the Persian” (The Washington Post)—has revised and expanded his acclaimed translation of Ferdowsi’s masterpiece, adding more than 100 pages of newly translated text. Davis’s elegant combination of prose and verse allows the poetry of the Shahnameh to sing its own tales directly, interspersed sparingly with clearly marked explanations to ease along modern audiences.

Originally composed for the Samanid princes of Khorasan in the tenth century, the Shahnameh is among the greatest works of world literature. This prodigious narrative tells the story of pre-Islamic Persia, from the mythical creation of the world and the dawn of Persian civilization through the seventh-century Arab conquest. The stories of the Shahnameh are deeply embedded in Persian culture and beyond, as attested by their appearance in such works as The Kite Runner and the love poems of Rumi and Hafez.

This audiobook is expertly read by Dick Davis, Nikki Massoud, and Sean Rohani with audio engineering by Blake Rook. 

This audio production from Echo Point Books & Media and Mage Publishers was made possible by the Parwiz Zafari fund at the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University. We are grateful to the Zafari family for their generous gift.